Documentary film “The Human Experience” produced by Grassroots Films of Brooklyn, New York, is getting some marketing help from some local Catholic organizations in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Six screenings of the film are planned for next week in Kalamazoo as part of a “Welcome Home for Christmas” campaign aimed at lapsed , said Steve Goffeney, executive director of the organization planning it, Newman’s Bookshoppe: The Catholic Information Center of Southwestern Michigan.
It took seven years but Colorado filmmaker Neil Truglio, has written and directed his very first feature film, We Are the Sea.
The Indian medical community is upset with producers of the Bollywood film Guzaarish after posters were released showing the lead actress holding a cigarette. Doctors think it is sending a wrong message to the youth on smoking.
The Algerian film “The Outlaws” by director Rachid Bouchareb won the Gold Award and the Best Arab Film Award at the 18th edition of Damascus International Film Festival. The Silver Award went to the Iranian film “Please Do Not Disturb”, directed by Mohsen Abdolvahab and the Bronze to the Syrian film “September Rain”, by director Abdellatif Abdelhamid.
In a Samson and Goliath tale, the gritty crime drama Animal Kingdom shares the lead in nominations with box-office hit Mao’s Last Dancer despite the latter pulling in almost three times the box office numbers making over $15 million locally. Both films are up for seven awards at the Australian Inside Film IF Awards ceremony in November.
Ethiopia has its first contender for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with (Ateltu) “The Athlete’. Co-directed by Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew, the low budget independent film is about Ethiopian barefoot marathon runner, Abeba Bikila who became the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal. Rasselas Lakew, who also wrote the screenplay, plays Abeba Bikila.
The San Francisco Film Society announced today the finalists and honorable mention for the second SFFS/Hearst Screenwriting Grant. The grant of $15,000 will be awarded to a mid-career screenwriter who has been a practicing writer for at least five years and who has previously written a minimum of one feature screenplay. The grant is open to writers residing in the United States whose project expresses both a unique personal perspective and an artistic approach to the subject. Priority is given to writers whose previous short or feature screenplays have been produced as independent films. The finalists were selected from 91 applicants submitted in response to a nationwide call for entries.
JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, a documentary on the life and career of Joan Rivers, made as the comedienne turns 75 years old, is one of the films screening this weekend as part of the West Virginia International film festival.
Mexican film, “On Childhood”, from director Carlos Carerra bested “Uninhabited” and “Monsters” to take home the Audience Award for Best International Feature Film at the 2010 Canberra International Film Festival in Canberra, Australia.
Of the hundreds of film festivals held each year in the U.S., Cinema Arts Festival Houston, held November 10-14, 2010, is the only festival specifically programmed to celebrate films by and about visual, performing, and literary artists. With support from city leaders, enthusiastic patrons and a highly developed network of arts organizations, the festival is a truly civic project, conceived to highlight one the most vibrant and diverse arts communities on earth.
Joining for the festival’s sophomore year are silver screen icons Isabella Rossellini, Shirley MacLaine, and John Turturro. Ms. Rossellini will present her own short works produced for the Sundance Channel, Green Porno and Seduce Me at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she will receive Houston-based Levantine Entertainment’s Levantine Cinema Arts Award. At the Rice Media Center, co-founded by her father Roberto Rossellini 40 years ago, Ms. Rossellini will present a special screening of Viaggio in Italia, the 1954 film directed by her father and starring her mother, Ingrid Bergman. Ms. MacLaine will be on hand to accept the Texas Film Award at a screening of the classic Houston, Texas film, Terms of Endearment. Actor and Director John Turturro will kick things off on opening night with a screening of Passione, his new “musical adventure” about Neapolitan music and dance. Alex Gibney, who directed the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, will present My Trip To Al Qaeda (2010), and his current project, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010); he will be joined by collaborators, and award-winning authors Lawrence Wright and Peter Elkind. Bill Plympton, the king of independent animation, will present his masterful new feature, Idiots and Angels, and the winning films he selected for this year’s Independent Exposure 2010.
